BY
HILARY HILLIARD ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
The book would have broken R.J. Martino’s bank.
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock senior knew he
shouldn’t drop a hundred bucks on a computer science
book.
But not buying it wasn’t an option. The textbook was
prescribed by his professor as mandatory for class. If he
wanted to learn the material, he had to fork over the cash.
So he did — begrudgingly.
Then he made a promise to himself: there was a cheaper way
to acquire textbooks, and he was going to find it.
Now Martino is operating a "fairly successful"
book trade Web site with fellow UALR student Sam Carrasquillo.
The blueprint is this: Students log onto www.UALRsource.org
and browse a list of classes and specific course texts available.
Student booksellers name their price and leave e-mail addresses
for buyers to contact.
It’s somewhat like E-Bay — the massive auction
site — but tailored for the academic world at UALR,
the state’s secondlargest university, though it’s
not affiliated with the school. "It brings the marketplace
to the seller, rather than brings the seller to the marketplace,"
Martino said.
When the site opened in April, about 420 people signed on
in the first two days.
The site’s bonus, according to Carrasquillo, is that
it circumvents "unbelievably expensive" textbook
stores.
Students selling directly to other students pick up more
cash than a bookstore would offer, he said. And buyers pay
slashed costs.
"Bookstores just buy the books extremely cheap and
sell them extremely high," Carrasquillo said. "We
were trying to look at something we could do to remedy that."
The duo isn’t alone in complaints about skyrocketing
book costs.
An average college student in the United States spent between
$727 and $807 on textbooks and supplies last school year,
according to The College Board.
Stoney Rawlins, the president of Associated Student Government
at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville estimated that
he spent more than $500 on books last semester alone.
"It’s getting ridiculous," he said.
"I see a lot more trading with friends in the same
classes now because of prices."
The textbook market is an estimated $7.8 billion a year
industry, based on sales data for the 2001-2002 school year,
said Laura Nakoneczny, a spokesman for the National Association
of College Stores.
New textbooks make up about $6.1 billion of that, while
used texts account for $1.6 billion.
A rising tide of anger over marked-up book prices —
which for used books often run well over $50 a pop —
has some students turning to alternatives like the UALR site,
or commercial discount retailer sites like Amazon.com and
Walmart.com, which each now feature textbook sections.
But so far that’s not affecting profits of association
members.
"We know that our sales in brick and mortar stores
haven’t fallen off," Nakoneczny said.
That’s the case at the University of Arkansas at Little
Rock Bookstore, said manager Brenda Thomas.
"The majority of the students buy their books on campus,"
she said.
She acknowledged that students have been turning to other
options, but said bookstores offer amenities that continue
to win over buyers.
"With the bookstore, you have the convenience of being
able to return it or exchange it if it’s not the right
book," she said. "It’s a hassle to get the
wrong edition from a Web site and have to send it back."
The UALR store might see minor dents in its profits because
of increased competition, but nothing that really hurts business,
she said.
"A couple of years ago, people were looking at that
with bookstores, but nothing happened," she said. "We’re
doing just fine."
The newness of online book buying has begun to wear off,
according to the college stores association, but the Internet
is still shaping the industry.
"I guess we would say that certainly the online alternatives
were an eye-opener four years ago," Nakoneczny said.
"It really forced [us] to take an active role at looking
other options."
Book buying is molded by students who are "very Internet
savvy," she said, so many bookstores start their own
Web sites. Follett Higher Education Group, the largest educational
bookseller in the United States and based in Illinois, is
among them.
Follett — which owns the bookstore at Arkansas State
University in Jonesboro — uses a "click and mortar"
philosophy that combines online buying with traditional stores,
said Cliff Ewert, a spokesman for the group.
"We haven’t seen any change in our sales [because
of online competition]. In fact our sales are up across the
board."
The Internet has posed a new dilemma for college stores
in the last two years, though.
Students are beginning to buy books online from overseas,
where they are often marked down by as much as half their
U.S. price, the college stores association reports.
The association doesn’t have data on the alternative’s
popularity, but it has been "watching the trend for about
18 months."
"These lower prices do exist overseas, and while we
haven’t really seen any business impact that we can
measure, our concern is really on behalf of students,"
Nakoneczny said.
The association wants to work with publishers to bring those
price benefits to American shores if possible, she said.
The trend doesn’t seem to have entered Arkansas borders
just yet. Most of the students interviewed had never heard
of buying books from overseas.
But Rawlins, the student government president at UA, said
his psychology professor told students he’d purchased
class text from England because it was cheaper.
"More and more people are paying attention to it, I
think," Rawlins said. "But I don’t know students
here who do it."
Martino and Carrasquillo — the enterprising team at
UALR — aren’t worried about battling their own
competition from students who prefer overseas buying as the
alternative to the alternative.
"Basically, everybody loves [our] idea, and they wish
they would have thought about it first," Carrasquillo
said. "Everybody likes to save money."
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